


All the lives we've lived are only golden-plated

by wejrdstrange



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pretentious, Voldemort is Harry Potter's Parent, jk rowling sucks, ngl my writing style is just yikes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25444291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wejrdstrange/pseuds/wejrdstrange
Summary: 2nd year of Hogwarts; rumours, a monster, a diary and a ghost. Also, revelations on Harry's heritage, parentage, and what even is parseltongue??
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter & Voldemort
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	All the lives we've lived are only golden-plated

**Author's Note:**

> so i wrote this cause i like the voldemort as harry's parent trope, but the whole "muggleborns are actually bad so the magic nazis were right all along" thing got to me (cause, you know _eugenics_ ) so i went "fuck it i'll do it myself" and now here we are. also there's gonna be a lot of swearing cause i remember being a year 8 (2nd year of secondary school" and i swore a _lot_ (i still do tbh), so if you're looking for canon-typical language please go somewhere else cause we're saying fuck jk and the bloody canon. also like,,, i name pretty much everything after song lyrics so bear with me.  
> fic title is from golden by fall out boy cause why not  
> chapter title is from to the end by my chemical romance because what else did you expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kinda wrote this just out of frustration with the trope where when its revealed that voldemort's harry's dad but also like,, the muggleborns were bad all along! the magical nazis were right! which is completely _yikes_ , but i do love the voldemort is harry's dad trope y'know. also i keep brit-picking in my brain when i read fanfics so i decided to write something as someone who knows that surrey is a county, not like a town or anything, and just over half the size of the smallest state in the usa (rhode island). i have a weirdly pretentious writing style, and i don't really have a plan or any intentions of making multiple drafts of shit.  
> also like **fuck** jk rowling and her transphobic bullshit. if you agree, feel free to not share your opinions in the comments and just,, leave. i don't give a damn about her canon or her intentions anymore and like,, i'm gonna swear like i did when i was 12 in this fic cause i just think its more realistic tbh. also i havent read or watched the chamber of secrets in years so i dont really remember shit so just roll with it.

It was a hot, muggy night in July. It was unremarkable in most ways other than it was the last full muggy night of the month. A black-haired boy lay in bed, waiting and staring at a broken digital clock on the shelf on the other side of the room. This was an annual ritual, a private birthday celebration where no one had celebrated with him before, and it seemed like no one would this year either. The cracked display read 23:59, 00:00.

"Happy birthday Harry." 12 year-old Harry Potter whispered to himself. He was slightly disappointed that no owls had arrived pecking at his barred window with birthday wishes, but he couldn't expect everyone to be up at this hour, especially considering his friends had already broken their promise to write to him about 3 weeks ago at the start of summer, and surely if they did write their letters would be written and delivered in daylight hours, not at midnight. Even so, the loneliness that should by then familiar to Harry felt all-consuming and soul-crushing. Sighing, he took his duvet cover that passed as a blanket from the end of his bed and settled in for a short- but still somehow insufferably long- 6 hours of sleep before Aunt Petunia rapped on his door and shoved a cold can of soup through his cat-flap of a food hatch. His eyes drifted shut and his breathing evened as he fell into a somewhat peaceful, dreamless sleep.

  


"BOY!" A shrill voice cut through the fuzziness of sleep, and Harry drowsily registered the banshee on the other side of the door as his Aunt Petunia, as her skeletal well-manicured hands shoved an open can of unheated chunky vegetable soup into his room with a fork stuck in. "Ten minutes then I expect you to be out here fully dressed." With that, Harry heard her walk from the door and down the stairs. Harry quickly dressed and grabbed the tin and fork, shovelling up half and left the other in Hedwig's cage. Hedwig drowsily blinked and turned her head towards him, silently criticising him for his shitty soup choice. Harry, however, had very little time to hunt for a mouse in the spotless Dursley residence, so apologised to Hedwig and left his bedroom.

Once Harry had reached the kitchen- where Aunt Petunia was thankfully cooking breakfast for her son and husband for once- she shoved an itinerary list for the day into his hand and a pair of secateurs into his hands, pointing him to the overgrown bush at the top of the chore list like some sort of '50s housewife version of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Malnutrition was really getting to him, Harry mused as he trudged outside into the 17°c weather, pleasant for manual labour but promising an uncomfortable level of heat later if this was what it was like just an hour after sunrise. Shaking his head to clear out his thoughts, and rubbing his eyes to clear the last remnants of sleep, Harry began to prune the bush. Six chores later, it was almost noon and the sun was high in the sky. Harry's shirt was soaked not just from sweat but also from Dudley's insistence on making his life as difficult and annoying as possible and spraying hose water on him, which honestly wasn't so much annoying as it was refreshing. What _was_ annoying was Dudley's taunts, having supposedly gotten over his fear of magic (though this was betrayed by his pale face and the tremor in his voice whenever he so much as mentioned the word).

"Oi freak isn't there some sort of spell for that?"

"What kind of freaky tricks are they teaching you there if you can't even push a wheelbarrow?" or Harry's personal favourite:

"How come if you're a wizard you're stuck here doing garden work?" 

Eventually, Harry snapped and turned, glaring, at the annoyance.

"How about you come a bit closer and I'll show you what I learnt at school then?!" Instantly, Harry was filled with regret as Dudley ran off like his arse was on fire, crying for his mum that the freak threatened to curse him, which in turn made Aunt Petunia cry shrilly for her husband that the boy was at it again, raising Uncle Vernon from his armchair in the living room right in front of the telly, his earthquake footsteps clearly audible even from the bottom of the garden where Harry was. He placed down his shears calmly, ignoring the tremor, and resigned himself to whatever cruel and unusual punishment Vernon could come up with. A meaty hand grabbed his wide collar, tearing at the threadbare fabric, but still managing to drag him backwards into the the house, down the hallway, and up the stairs, throwing him into his bedroom. Harry scrambled back against his bed, turning to catch a glimpse of Vernon's alarmingly purple face before the door was slammed shut and the sound of 3 locks moving replaced the tirade that Harry was supposed to be listening to, but had learnt to zone out.

"Well..." Harry muttered to no one as he moved to the loose floorboard and dislodged it, reaching into the nook and taking out a photo album. He opened it to the first page and stared at his parents, trying to stave off the loneliness that came to him whenever he was stuck in this room. He stared at the eyes that everyone said he had, the face and the hair that he had supposedly inherited. Personally, he couldn't see it. It seemed more like he took more after a grandparent or something, since all he shared with James Potter was messy black hair (not uncommon) and round glasses, which wasn't an inheritable characteristic. But what did Harry know? For all he knew he looked just like his father at his age, and wizards simply get much more affected by puberty than muggles do. That seemed like a good question to ask Hermione if he could unlock Hedwig's cage without the constant threat of Uncle Vernon killing her once he knew she had been let out. Harry placed down the album, and reached deeper into the nook, grabbing an innocuous-looking novel and settling down to read.

  


Before he knew it, it was sunset. Harry put down the book and got up, stretching out the kinks in his back. Hedwig hooted at him to make him aware that she was hungry and demanded food.

"Me too, Hedwig, me too."

As the night got later, he fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming of things that by all means he shouldn't remember: flying motorcycles; a green flash; a woman begging then falling to the floor with a curtain of fire behind her. The unsettled rest was interrupted once again by the sound of skinny knuckles on wood and a shrill woman's voice demanding that Harry Wales up and tidies the entire house as soon as possible or he'll have to answer to his uncle. He sluggishly moved out of his bed, the springs squeaking as he threw his legs over and grimaced at the sweat all over his body. Harry walked outside his now unlocked bedroom and stood in the hallway for a second, hoping that August might be more interesting than July was.

**Author's Note:**

> my favourite book is the picture of dorian gray, so that's the behind the long compound sentences. idk leave a comment or a kudo or something if you like this or have any suggestions or criticism or even just spelling or geography corrections because i haven't learnt anything about geography since year 8. also i'm assuming that the school year ends around the same time that the prep school near my school ends, which is 2 weeks ahead, so harry has about 7 weeks of summer holiday, maybe 9 since i remember the summer holidays being shortened around the 2010s, as well as that being somewhere in my notes for my weird law piece i wrote when i was like 13.


End file.
